


Dissonance

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Fireside Tales [130]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Future, GFY, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The song that had been so bright and pure and beautiful the first time he'd been in the world now holds a dissonance that he almost recognizes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> Durin, listening to the stone of Khazad-dûm  
> Prompt: Silence  
> Alternate Universe: Requiem Court

There is a silence in some of the deeper tunnels that speaks of horrors that have long haunted the halls and rooms of the once-beautiful city. It's no longer as silent as when he'd first found it again, but there are still places he can go to find the quiet he sometimes craves. It's part of his new life, he thinks, but he cannot be certain. Only that being wrapped in the flesh of Men seems to dull his ability to hear the song of the stone of the world.

Here, he can listen to it, leaning against the rock, his eyes closed in a darkness he cannot see through without a lantern. The song that had been so bright and pure and beautiful the first time he'd been in the world now holds a dissonance that he almost recognizes, and thinks if he listens long enough he will identify.

If he can remember the source of the dissonance, he might find the answer to why he had woken into the body of a Man, in a village that was burning down around him, with a dead child that he knew was his own held tightly to him. Why the world is in flames, with mountains leveled and rivers gone. Oceans rising higher than he recalls, and with no dwarves or elves to counter the overwhelming work of Men. No one to guard the great gates of a kingdom he had made and he had lost in other lives.

Some of the missing have found their way here, some to other strongholds. He doesn't care, so long as this place remains the refuge and citadel he recalls it to be. Guarded by jealous mountains more than their Evening Court, by snow and wind and rock more than gun and cannon and knife. It is still good to have those who can be more discriminate in their guarding than a mountain who wants nothing but those it remembers. It allows refugees to arrive safely within the halls, to be sheltered and fed and kept safe from the chaos he'd woken a part of.

Durin sighs, leaning his head back against the stone in the lowest deeps of Khazad-dûm, opening his eyes to the darkness that they cannot pierce. He will not do as others have done, to make a body more akin to the one he had once worn, but he remembers lifetimes as a Man before this one, now. Lifetime after lifetime, and he will walk the world again and again for as long as he must. For he is the one the Maker has sent back the most, and he thinks of this world as his as much as it is the Maker's and the Valar's.

"What is making you jangle to your bones, my love?" he whispers, hands spread against the stone as he tries to listen to the song that is so much harder to hear than once it was. "What is trying to break you?"

**Author's Note:**

> Durin is going to be one of the first who figures out what's the root of the trouble the world is in, though not _the_ first - that honor goes to Galadriel. Realizing the problem, and being able to do anything about fixing it, though, are two different things, and I'm not entirely sure if it will be possible for those who remember who they were to actually fix the problem on their own. On the other hand, they're also unlikely to have assistance, so they'll _have_ to do it on their own.


End file.
